


Our Real Work

by dudski



Category: Joan of Arcadia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dudski/pseuds/dudski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan Girardi egging a car isn't exactly an unfamiliar scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Real Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_of_the_Refrigerator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_of_the_Refrigerator/gifts).



Joan Girardi eventually shatters every one of Gavin Price's assumptions about her future – or lack thereof. She continues to pull her grades up, never to her brother's standard but certainly enough to make UT Austin possible if it were still what she wanted. Towards the end of her junior year it's like a switch flips and all of a sudden she stops showing up in his office, stops making scenes in the hallway and provoking displays of civil disobedience from the student body and signing up for a different extracurricular every week. Her previous unpredictability is replaced by a quiet intensity and determination. Gavin assumes initially that it's a last-minute scramble to improve her chances of getting into a good school, but in one last return to unpredictability, Joan Girardi applies to Arcadia Community College and nowhere else. He overhears Helen talking to his secretary one day – Joan wanted to be close to family, she said, wanted to take some time to explore her options before pursuing a four-year degree.

It sounds like bullshit to Gavin, but he has better things to focus on. Graduation is coming, after all. Graduation: That glorious day when hundreds of students leave his life forever, months before they're replaced by a new batch of morons and delinquents.

Over the next few years, he almost forgets about Joan Girardi, about her near-weekly visits to his office and the way she'd always seemed so bewildered by the existence of whatever trouble she'd caused. His problem students are much more run of the mill now: Vandals and cheaters and bullies and disrespectful little punks. Arcadia High had gotten rid of Grace Polk only to see the new freshman class bring three more who were just like her, if a little less committed to their cause du jour, and that hellish trio is in and out of his office constantly. He still overhears Helen giving someone the occasional update, but he forgets the information almost as soon as he hears it. Joan Girardi was a problem student, then she wasn't, and then she graduated and wasn't his problem anymore.

Which is why it would be an understatement to say that he's surprised, a few years later, when he walks out of a late meeting with the school board to find Joan Girardi in the parking lot: twenty-three, drunk, and egging Ryan Hunter's car.

His surprise fades, though, and habit takes over. "Miss Girardi, back to our old ways, are we? Trespassing, vandalism, and public drunkenness – I see you're as dedicated as ever to building a well-rounded resume."

She turns slowly, one hand still raised and ready to throw an egg, and when she sees him her face immediately assumes the "who, me?" deer in the headlights expression he was so accustomed to a few years ago. "Shit," she says (eloquence was never a strong suit of Joan's), "you're not going to make me do community service again, are you? Because that ended terribly for me last time."

It did, he remembers that. The Rove/Girardi breakup had been a nasty one, and the weeks following it saw more hysterical scenes and impromptu causes from Joan than the entire previous semester. Actually, it was when she calmed down from that frenzy that Joan had suddenly become a model student.

His trip down memory lane is interrupted when Joan leans over and throws up on the hood of Hunter's car. Gavin knows he should do something, but – the thing is, it was a long, long meeting, four hours of Ryan Hunter shooting down every one of Gavin's requests and proposals, always with that infuriating smirk on his face like somehow life is one big game and he's winning, and, well, after all that, he'd rather give Joan, who is now sitting on the ground, leaning back against the car and almost certainly getting egg on her jacket, a trophy than a reprimand. He can't just leave her here, though.

He sighs heavily. Gavin Price is about to aid and abet delinquency and vandalism. This day certainly has taken a turn.

"Get in the car, Ms. Girardi."

"Thanks but no thanks," she singsongs, eyes closed like she hasn't got a care in the world.

"Ms. Girardi, I could easily leave you here – the man whose car you just egged will be coming out to his car at any minute, and while you clearly don't care at all about your own reputation or future, it might interest you to know that he is a well-connected man who sits on the school board, which makes him someone with the power to make your mother's job very difficult for her if he so chooses. Get. In. The. Car."

"Oh my god, he's COMING?" Joan screeches, suddenly coherent and scrambling to her feet. "We have to go, we have to get out of here, Ryan can't see me like this." She practically hurls herself into the car, is settled in on the passenger side and has her seat belt buckled before he even reaches his door.

It throws him, the way she refers to Hunter like he's someone she knows, someone whose personal opinion of her actually matters. He'd just assumed she'd picked a car at random – who knew why kids did the things they did? Who knew why Joan Girardi did anything? The question starts forming before he can stop it. "You and Ryan Hunter aren't—"

"What? Gross!" The look of disgust on Joan's face is absolute. That answers that, then. "I just…he can't see me like this, he's not supposed to. I'm not supposed to be like this, even if it is his fault, and I shouldn't have done any of this but if he finds out that I did then he wins, and he can't win, he can't, because we've been working so hard and I still can't even match him, every time I think I'm getting close to figuring it all out he just comes out of nowhere and – Mr. Price, do you ever feel like you're supposed to be doing something, like there's really important things for you to accomplish, but you don't even know what they are or where to start and the person or whatever who used to guide you isn't doing it anymore and you don't know where they went or why you're even there in the first place?"

Gavin has completely forgotten why helping her ever seemed like a good idea. He hates teenagers. She may not be one anymore, but the only difference between the hysterical Joan Girardi in his car right now and the hysterical Joan Girardi who was in his office every week six years ago is a decent amount of alcohol.

"Mister Price, come on, this is serious. How do we know what we're supposed to be doing?"

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work," he says. He doesn't know why Wendell Berry popped into his head, but it feels fitting enough.

Joan doesn't seem to think so, though. She's staring at him like he's just turned her world upside down. "What did you – you're not – are you – God?"

"Ms. Girardi, I know you weren't the best student, but surely you have encountered poetry at some point in your life. A poem is a series of carefully chosen and structured words, not a supernatural occurrence."

"Oh. Right." She almost seems disappointed. "My apartment's just ahead on the right, you can drop me here." He parks and she moves to go, but ducks her head back into the car as soon as she's out. "That thing you said. What was that again?"

The question doesn't even throw him – Joan's sudden interest in literature is the least surprising thing about this night. "It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey."

Joan is still for what seems like a long time, a dozen emotions crossing her face. "Weirdly enough," she says carefully, "I think that actually helps. Thanks, I guess."

And then she's slamming the car door and running up to her building, pausing just long enough at the door to turn and shout back to thank him for the ride before she's gone, leaving Gavin to sit in his car and wonder if anyone's ever really understood Joan Girardi.


End file.
